Ask Celes: Are You Planning To Release a Hard Copy or Kindle/e-Reader version of Your Ebooks?

Hi Celes, will you be releasing a paper version of your ebooks? I spend a lot of time in front of the computer in the day and prefer to read my books away from the computer. A physical copy will also make a great gift to others.

Hi Celes, are you planning other ebook formats for your ebooks (EPUB or MOBI for Kindle)? – Various readers

My ebook products are currently available in the standard .pdf format, which can be read as long as you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. I’ve received a lot of questions about alternate formats for ever since releasing them, so I thought this is a perfect opportunity to address them publicly.

Releasing in Hard Copy

On paper version, I’ve no plans to release it for my ebooks, simply because it’s not feasible:

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My best-selling ebooks, Live a Better Life in 30 Days Program and Be a Better Me in 30 Days Program, have about 400 pages each, with colored pictures littered throughout. Just printing alone is going to cost quite a bit, let alone shipping costs. The current pricing, which is already very competitive, won’t be enough to cover the printing.

With the high number of papers, going digital is the most environmental-friendly option. Think of the number of trees we’re saving with every digital copy purchased over a paper one.

My ebooks usually have hyperlinks to other articles on PE, which make it easy for readers to access for more information. When printed, the links will be lost. Even if transcribed, it’s still troublesome to have to type them out on a browser.

That said, I do have plans to release a paper book at some point in my personal development career. Not for my existing ebooks, but for a brand new book (personal development related of course).

I’ve been approached by a few publishers before, but I rejected them as they did not have the reach I was looking for. One of the key reasons why I’d want to go into book publishing is because I want to reach out to brand new audiences that aren’t already reading PE, so I’d only want to work with a publisher that is (a) considerably well-known (b) highly credible and established in the personal development arena (c) has a high reach in the market.

As I’m looking at book publishing as a next level milestone, I’m taking my time before I make any plans in this area. For sure, I don’t want to release a paper book for the sake of it – that would defeat the purpose altogether. Anyone can release a paper book with a few grand, and this isn’t what I’m looking at. At the moment I’m working to grow Personal Excellence further — I reckon when it’s grown large enough (say, 100 million readers/month), it’ll be a matter of time before opportunities with big publishers start opening our way.

Releasing Other E-Reader Formats

As for other ebook formats like EPUB (generic ereader) or MOBI (Kindle), it’s on my to-do list. The problem is, it’s apparently not as straightforward as just saving it in the format (at least, not that I know of).

Firstly, it doesn’t help too that there isn’t a one standardized ereader format — EPUB is supposedly the generic format for all ereaders, but for some reason Amazon Kindle doesn’t support that (it uses MOBI format). It’s challenging enough producing a book without having to fiddle around with all these ebook formats.

Secondly, I’ve tried conversion software and Amazon Digital Text Platform (for publishing to Kindle) before, but they never convert perfectly. There are always formatting issues littered everywhere, which makes publishing in these formats a bigger project than I’m able to handle at the moment.

I reckon I need to get my hands on a Kindle and other ereaders first, so I can see how the final product looks like on the readers, before releasing them.

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If anyone has any suggestions and actual experience on publishing on Kindle/other ereaders, I’m all ears!